she continued, with wide eyes.
I chewed on my bottom lip. “I don’t know if I ever really stopped being in love with him. Even when I was with Hayden, who I cared about so much, I never completely stopped thinking about Michael. It was as if my feelings for him were simply put on hold, like they were in remission, but never completely eradicated.” I felt guilty for saying that after how wonderfully Hayden treated me. He had even told me he loved me, but I never felt sure enough about our relationship to say it back.
Olivia nodded and looked as if she was thinking this information over. “Does that mean you wouldn’t hook up with anyone else? Even though the two of you are just dating?”
I quickly shook my head. I couldn’t tell whether she was trying to drag me down into her bad mood or not, but her demeanor was definitely starting to get on my nerves.
“No,” I leaned my chin on my palm of my hand and scrunched up my face at the thought of being with another guy. “I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize being with him.”
“Do you think he would?” she asked, softening a bit.
I opened my mouth to answer, but then closed it. I just sat there for a moment, trying to form a sentence. The idea of Michael sleeping with someone else was extremely painful, even though we weren’t in a committed relationship.
“I don’t know,” was all I could muster up. A wave of jealousy rolled through my chest and stomach at the idea of Michael even kissing another girl. I shook my head, telling myself not to think that way.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said flatly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I wasn’t sure why, but the question continued to bounce around in my mind. Would he continue to date other girls? Or were we trying to work toward something together?
“I’m alright,” I lied, forcing a smile on my face. I ran my hands over my forehead and then through my hair. “What about you, Olivia? Are you alright?” I asked softly?
She just nodded and gave me a crooked smile.
“We should order because we’re going to be late to class,” I closed my menu.
“Sure,” she said, cocking her head to the side. I could tell what she was thinking, and what that look meant. Pity. And I hated being pitied.
The next morning I woke up early and decided to take an impromptu stroll at around eight-thirty over to the farmer’s market set up in Union Square. Being that the Union Square subway entrance was one of the easiest ways to transfer to any line in the city, the neighborhood was always busy. This morning, however, 14th street was downright packed. I thought about turning back for a moment, but then I remembered the contents of my refrigerator were low, and I could really use some fresh fruit.
As I browsed a stand boasting the best apples in the city, I got a funny feeling. Like someone was watching me. I paid the cashier for a few apples and then turned around to see if I was going crazy. I wasn’t. Two stands over, next to a woman selling artisan jam, stood Cassandra. She was mulling over a purchase as she looked up and caught my eye. I froze. This was the second time I had seen her out in the wild. I still had no intention of walking over to her. The last thing I said to her was that she owed me an apology. I’m still waiting for one.
We both just stood there for a moment, watching each other. It was obvious she was on her way to work. She was wearing a light-blue, knee-length dress with nude pumps. I had donned sweat pants and an old David Bowie t-shirt. I felt a pang of sadness as I remembered how close we were just a little over a year ago. I missed her. As I watched her gaze leave mine, her hand reach into her purse, and hand the woman cash in exchange for the jam, it dawned on me that she really didn’t miss me. She didn’t look back at me after that, she just took off. I watched her strut to the corner of 13th and Broadway so she could more easily hail a cab to work.
I took a deep breath and a few warm tears hit my cheeks. I didn’t know what to think. How could someone change so much in such a short amount of time? And then I thought of my ex-boyfriend, Nicholas. Hadn’t something similar happened to him? I wiped the tears away, but they just kept coming. Was something in the water here? How was it that two people who were such a huge part of my life, could just morph into completely different individuals and utterly not care if they ever saw or spoke to me again. Granted, I was the one who had broken things off with Nick the second time around. But that was after he turned into a power-hungry snob. I bit my bottom lip and wondered if the same thing was happening to Cassandra.
I finally stopped crying long enough to check the time on my phone. I had a “good morning” text from Michael that allowed my trembling lips to smile. I texted him back, popped on my headphones, and walked back to my neighborhood with my apples in tow.
“So what did you think of that last venue we looked at?” Alex crossed over to me from the kitchen. He plopped down on the sofa and started to untie his suede John Varvatos shoes. We had spent the entire day looking at venues.
I took a deep breath and started cracking my knuckles out of stress. We had just gotten off the train and walked all the way from the subway exit back to Alex’s apartment. We were both beat.
The truth was, I loved the last place we looked at. The Mondrian Hotel down in SoHo offered a beautiful entryway with a garden-like atmosphere and French-style decorating all throughout the hotel. The downside? It was two hundred and fifty dollars a head for a Saturday wedding, and only a bit cheaper for a Friday night at two twenty five.
What Alex didn’t know was that I had met my mother at the King Cole Bar the other day to talk about him. For the most part, I don’t give much weight to my mother’s opinions. But when she told me over a glass of wine that she “swore” she saw Alex out with another girl, I couldn’t ignore it.
“I thought it was gorgeous,” I said through a sigh, my mother’s smug face popping into my mind. “Perfect in fact.”
Alex straightened up on the couch and offered me a smile. “Then why do you look so sad, baby?”
The reason I looked so sad was clear. After I told my mother that she was wrong, that she couldn’t have possibly seen something that was more than a friendly hello with a fellow classmate, she pulled out her phone and showed me a picture.
I couldn’t see who the girl was, because she was facing the other way. From what I could tell she was wearing heels and had long, red hair. But what I could clearly see was Alex’s face. The two of them were embraced in a hug and, from what I could tell, it was around our school.
“He’s cheating on you,” she had said, in between sips of her Bordeaux.
I shook my head at her. “You’re wrong. I know there’s an explanation.”
But deep down I didn’t know for sure that Alex wouldn’t cheat on me. I believed anyone was capable of doing anything. And my mother planting seeds of doubt in my mind only made me feel worse. Taking the phone out of her hand, I texted the picture to my phone and told her I had to leave.
Now, with Alex still waiting for an answer as to why I looked so sad, I realized I wasn’t ready to talk to him about it yet.
“Because this wedding is going to end up costing upwards of fifty grand by the time all is said and done.” I immediately craved a cigarette. I instinctively reached for my pack in my purse, and then bit my bottom lip in frustration when I remembered that I was trying to quit and hadn’t bought a new pack this morning. “And that’s not including what our honeymoon is going to cost. At this point we’d be lucky to afford a motel at the Jersey shore.”
Alex let out a chuckle and wrapped his strong arms around me. As soon as his body pressed onto mine, I felt myself relax. The truth was, I wanted a big wedding. I wanted the white dress, the long aisle to float